The War Before Mine

By Caroline Ross

It's 2006 and Alex Mullen is coming to terms with a terrible past. Meeting up with Frankie, who shared the bad times, exposes one of Australia's cruelest secrets. In Falmouth, 1942, commando Philip Seymour sails for France. Left on the quayside is Rosie, a half-Romany girl looking for something more from life than collecting old clothes to sell on for pennies. Philip, who turned down a commission on principle, is pal Tucker—haunted by dreams of strange beasts hanging in his father's cold store, and Anderson—a mean spirited wide-boy who Philip doesn't quite trust, are about to make history in the audacious raid on the docks of St Nazaire. What befalls the commandos shapes the lives of Rosie, Alex, and Philip in ways none of them could have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Honno Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781906784850

Book preview

Memoirs of a Child Migrant, 2006

I’m holding in my hand the bit of paper that’s supposed to tell me who I am. The handwriting is rounded, kind of friendly; the ink – after 60-odd years – still black and sure; the paper authentically curled at the edges. Looking at it I think, hang about mate, you’ve got it wrong. This is the truth; it must be.

But I know I was only four when I was put on the SS Asturias in 1947. This birth certificate, showing my age to have been five years, three months and seventeen days, is a lie. Someone made it up. Some very Christian nun changed the facts because you had to be at least five to go. I wonder how she swung it?

Because I was so young, I’ve only got a few pictures in my head of life on the ship. I hated being on deck because the sight of the endless sea petrified me. I suppose I was used to interiors, corridors, confining walls. When we docked, the land around the few buildings stretched away like the sea, huge and empty.

Frankie remembers much more than I do, because he was nine when we left England together. Meeting up with him again has been – I can’t really describe it – very emotional.

‘Is that you, Littlun?’ he said, looking up at me. ‘You’ve grown a bit.’

Frankie. I’d never forgotten him, though it’d been more than fifty years. He’d always been in the background, sort of hiding in the bushes and peering out now and again to remind me I didn’t have a right to be happy. I recognised not so much the face as the taut set of it, the pain lines now carved into brown, weathered skin. The lopsided walk was new.

Frankie lives in some woop woop town up north, likes the wild, he says, prefers animals to people. You could see at the reunion he felt awkward in company. He still has that Pommie way of talking, though he told me he’d never been back. He stared down into his white wine, ‘They helped me,’ he gestured with his glass around the room, ‘this lot, trace who I was, you know, where I came from.’ He took a breath. ‘Forty years before I found out her name. I wrote to her. Came back marked deceased. Left it after that. Didn’t want to find out she’d only just died.’

His voice trembled. ‘They told me I’ve three male…siblings scattered round the UK.’ He snorted a sort of laugh. ‘Glad they didn’t call them brothers. Dirty word for us, isn’t it?’ I opened my mouth to speak but he cut me off, ‘I can’t afford to go gallivanting over there.’ He drained his glass in one. ‘I bloody hate wine. Let’s have a look for some beer.’

We walked across the room together in search of tinnies – two old men falling into step together after half a century. He’d avoided the word. Mother, mum, mom. A soft sound in any language, a wrap-you-up-warm sound. A word hug. When you’ve never had one, whatever age you are, it’s a word that makes you cry.

1

Gateshead, September 1939

Two rabbit skins hang on the washing line. Da must’ve brought them when he came back late last night. Her head pushed under the blackout curtain, Rosie looks out and thinks how oddly blind all the houses are, the windows of their eyes covered over. Blacked out by her father, who’d managed to get hold of about half a mile of fabric, and sold it a penny cheaper a yard than you could get it in the town.

Rosie pins up a corner of the curtain so some light seeps into the room. It’s still early, before the six-o-clock hooter. She feels her small brother move behind her. ‘No. Wake up. Not in the bed, Alf.’ She hauls his warm little body on to her lap and shunts them both off the bed. ‘Ssssssss. That’s it.’ Alf sways against her as he pees in an unsteady arc into the bucket. ‘Good boy. Go on back to sleep now.’

A creak from the room next door tells her Da is awake and the anxiety returns. He’ll go mad when he finds out, and one word from her could put a stop to it. Da has his boots on. She hears his heavier tread in the scullery and imagines him tearing off a hunk of bread; putting it in his pocket. The door slams and he’s at the top of the steps, running a comb through his thick dark hair, slipping it in his pocket. For a second he’s close enough to touch through the glass, then he trots briskly down, the cuffs on his trousers rising to show polished leather heels. He turns and ducks under the washing in the yard, a brown hand resting for a moment on one of the skins.

‘If he looks up and sees me,’ thinks Rosie, ‘I’ll tell him.’ But he doesn’t look up. She hears her father’s footsteps fade as he passes down the narrow alleyway into the street.

Mam’s in the doorway, her tired face pink with hope.

‘We’ve got to hurry, Rosie.’ She digs small patches of yellow felt out of her apron pocket. ‘Could you sew these on?’

‘It’s not fair, Mam, going off without a word…’

‘But what would happen if we told him? It’s a chance, Rosie. I’m thinking of you children.’

I know, I know. Trying to make us what we aren’t. Another of your mad ideas. But Rosie fetches the needle and thread and says nothing more.

Out on the street, it’s clear most of their neighbours are staying put. Only Martha, lipsticked and cheerful, is pushing her three bairns along the road, little labels fluttering from their holey cardigans. Mam keeps apologising to the disapproving female faces watching from their steps. ‘I’m going too, Mary. God willing, Jane, they said we won’t be separated with me in my condition.’

Rosie feels their neighbours’ eyes following them up the street and wishes Mam would keep quiet. As soon as they’re out of sight the women’s tongues will start wagging. Chance of a trip out. Only to be expected from the likes of them. It’s in the blood

Rosie pulls the twins along. Jean skips beside her, blonde hair flopping, carrying nothing as usual. John lugs the suitcase. They cross Durham Road, the poster opposite telling them Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution, Will Bring Us Victory. Rosie can see the meeting place under the clock, and make out the thin form of Miss Robinson, one of the teachers, when a voice stops Mam in her tracks.

‘Susan Mullen! You’re never going on the ’vacuation?’ It’s Aunt Betty, staring at them all in horror.

‘I’m taking them where it’s safe.’ Mam’s voice went up a notch. ‘You should send your kids too.’

‘My bairns are safe at home, where these should be.’ Betty looks at Mam narrowly, ‘What does our Sammy have to say about it?’ A pause. ‘Our Sammy doesn’t know, does he? You’ve never told your own husband.’

‘We got instructions to go,’ pleads Mam.

‘Instructions is it? Taking the bairns away from their father to some gadgies you never even met? Come on home with me now before Sammy finds out.’ Betty turns to Rosie. ‘I thought better of you, girl. Leaving me in the lurch. You ought to have more sense, encouraging your Mam to do something so stupid.’

Rosie struggles with herself. ‘Mam knows what she’s about, Aunt Betty.’ A rush of yellow-tagged kids swirl around them and Mam lunges forward, pulling them all with her. When Rosie looks back, Betty stands watching after them, a stern rock in a moving sea of children.

Miss Robinson ticks off names. ‘I’m afraid you have to say your goodbyes now. No parents are allowed on the platform.’ Mam pulls aside her coat to show her big belly. Miss Robinson peers at it over her glasses. ‘Yes I remember, Mrs Mullen, you’re coming with us. And Rosemary?’ Miss Robinson rubs her forehead unhappily. ‘Didn’t you leave school last year?’

‘No Miss,’ lies Rosie.

Miss Robinson scribbles on her paper and they go through the barrier. But they have to wait hours, the sun growing stronger all the time and everyone getting hot and sticky. Rosie worries that her aunt might go looking for Da, and he’ll appear on the platform and drag them all home. Not that she’d find Da very easily, and not that Betty, who made a living buying and selling second-hand clothes, was likely to give up one minute of a day when there’d be a load of kids’ clothes going cheap. But still, Rosie feels greatly relieved when at last they board the train for Middleton-in-Teesdale.

Miss sends Rosie up the carriages to do a head count and to make sure none of the children has got in with the wrong party. Some of them are from places like Bensham and Teams, snotty-nosed with big starey eyes and grey knees. And their clothes… Aunt Betty wouldn’t give tuppence for a sackful. Rosie thinks how pleased people will be to take her family rather than these scruffy kids.

But as it turns out, nobody wants them. They stand for hours in a huge church hall while people circle round, gawking, choosing. There isn’t even a chair for Mam. It’s six in the evening and almost everyone else has gone when a farmer, bringing with him a strong animal smell, nods over towards Jean and mutters in Miss Robinson’s ear, ‘I’ll take her and the mother.’

Miss explains that the family does not wish to be separated, making this sound very tiresome indeed. Another man wanders round jangling a set of keys, wanting to lock up. Miss keeps raising her eyebrows in their direction and saying God willing she’ll finally get a nice cup of tea and her bed. The farmer’s near the door when Miss hurries over to him and says something in a low voice, but Rosie hears his reply quite distinctly. ‘The rest of them look like gypsies.’

But he turns, walks back and takes off his tweed cap.

‘Your teacher here tells me you’ve got Spanish blood.’ Mam says yes, that’s true, on her husband’s side. The farmer looks at them doubtfully.

Miss confides in a loud whisper, ‘John here’s very strong, Mr Pudsey. Well, all the family are hard-working and reliable. And of course the allowances paid for such a number add up to quite an amount, I would imagine.’

Mr Pudsey thrusts his big red face at them. ‘And you’re not too grand to share a room, the lot of yous?’ Rosie looks anxiously at Mam. But she says no, of course they don’t mind, if he will be so kind as to have them. ‘Then you’d best follow me.’ He leads them outside to a waiting horse and cart and they all climb in.

It’s dusk by the time the big feathery-footed horse pulls them clear of the town and starts up a long narrow lane towards shadowy hills. The motion of the cart soon sends the twins off to sleep, Alf’s head on Rosie’s lap, Robbie’s pressing on her ribs. Jean sits chattering beside Mr Pudsey. Mam’s face is grey, her eyes half closed. As the horse plods uphill, the houses thin, then disappear altogether and they are among bare hills, where it seems impossible that anyone could live. Mr Pudsey, charmed by Jean’s giggles, grows more friendly, occasionally turning his broad red face over his shoulder to address a remark to the rest of them. ‘And you, Miss Indian Princess, how old might you be?’

‘Fourteen,’ lies Rosie.

A small white-painted house glimmers on the hillside.

‘Is that your house, Mister?’ says John.

Mr Pudsey nods. As they near the place they can see, flanking the house, a huge corrugated iron barn. John hops down to open the gate and they trundle up a rutted lane through a tumble of sheds and a few wandering cows. On the hillsides all about them are hundreds of bleating sheep, whitish blobs in the fading light. Alf and Robbie wake and start grizzling.

A woman stands in the doorway and regards them sourly, but it seems Pudsey rules the roost, because after a few muttered words from him she sits them down in the dark kitchen, ladles out bowls of thick barley broth, and plonks a big pot of tea on the table. When they’ve eaten, she leads them up a flight of stairs to a room with faded rosebud-patterned wallpaper, and gives out cushions and prickly woollen blankets.

Mam asks about getting to Mass on Sunday, and Mrs raises her eyebrows to the bumpy ceiling, as if to say ‘Catholics too!’, replying that it will be ninety-nine per cent impossible unless she fancies walking the four miles down to Middleton and while she’s on the subject she hopes they realise it isn’t a lovely holiday in the country they’ve come on, there’s plenty of work to be done and another thing, if anything at all goes missing, they’ll be out on their ears.

Who does she think she’s talking to? thinks Rosie. Mucky cow with a face like a blind cobbler’s thumb, but just before the dam bursts Mr Pudsey comes along to see how they’re settled and changes his mind about having them all in one room, offering John a raised platform at the end of the passage, reached by a little ladder. John climbs up, spreads out the blankets Mr Pudsey gives him, climbs down, climbs up again, asks if the whole bed is really his, and the farmer laughs and tells him he’d better look lively because it’s time for the nightly round of the farm.

Rosie watches as Mam hangs the picture of the Sacred Heart from a nail in the wall and then lies down on one of two beds, her hands crossed on the top of her swollen belly.

Feeling anger against everything and everyone, particularly Mam, but unable to voice it, Rosie quietens Alf and Robbie by pushing open the window and lifting them on to the deep sill to look out into the darkness. The breeze, clean and grassy-scented, chills their cheeks. Something not quite a dog barks and the farm collies start up, howling and yammering. John’s excited voice comes clearly through the air, ‘Have ye’s got a gun Mister?’

The barking stills, the voices fade. Night wings beat only a little way above their heads. The ghostly sheep move on the hill. Once she’s settled the twins on the floor, Rosie goes top-to-toe with Jean. She listens to John and the farmer come in, the banging shut of the bolts and feet on the stairs. Calmer now, she hears in her head Da’s slow tread up the steps to the three empty rooms, and feels glad to be away from him.

Life with the Pudseys isn’t the new and better life among well bred people and elegant things Mam had imagined. But as the baby in her begins to take over, she becomes more content. Between darning Pudsey’s terrible old socks and patching Mrs’s sheets, Mam starts to make little rompers. She can’t get enough of the smell of Vim and devotes hours to cleaning the pockmarked sink.

For Rosie it isn’t happiness exactly, but the possibility of happiness that makes life better. Miss had said that once she got the school going down in Middleton, she’d send word to Rosie to come and help with the younger ones, so she allows herself to dream of one day being a teacher. They see few people, so there are fewer people able to look down their noses at them, and though the Old Cow does her best to make up for it, you aren’t forever reminded of where you belong.

One warm day, Pudsey gives them a basket containing bread, cheese and two bottles of ginger beer and tells them to ‘get theirselves away up above’ for a picnic. Rosie and John push breathless Mam up the path, while Jean runs on ahead with the twins. Mam lies on the heather, plump and pink, thanking the Lord for the blessed relief of getting the weight off her feet. She looks beautiful, her fair hair spread out, the brightness of the sun blotting out the lines on her face. She pats the heather. ‘Come on, Rosie. It’s like the best sprung mattress.’

Lying there together, Mam takes Rosie’s hand and rests it on her belly. ‘Feel that! He’s kicking, my big, strong boy.’ A ripple of movement tickles across Rosie’s palm. ‘Alexander, I’m going to call him. There’s no one to stop me, here.’ She turns her face to her daughter and smiles so happily Rosie feels tears behind her eyes. Poor Mam. Da had point-blank refused to go along with the fancy names she’d wanted for them all. Theodore, Vanessa, Winston, Laetitia. She could have been Laetitia!

‘Alexander’s a nice name,’ she says.

Alf runs up with a few crinkled whinberries. He feeds them to Mam one by one and a little pearl of dark red juice trickles down from the side of her mouth.

The weather’s colder a fortnight later when John and Rosie, herding sheep into a pen one Sunday morning, see a curl of smoke rise from the lane below. They run a little way down the path and see it comes from a car, apparently broken down. A figure detaches itself from the vehicle and starts up the road. Rosie watches the tiny shape move forward and catches her breath. ‘It’s Da,’ she says. Neither of them can bear to tell Mam, peeling potatoes in the kitchen. Instead, they watch Da advance up the lane and through the gate, swinging a tin can in one hand.

Pudsey comes out of the barn, rubbing muck off his hands with straw. He looks at the children and then their father. Da, keeping his eyes on the farmer, dips the tin can into the cattle trough.

‘Problems with your car?’ Pudsey enquires.

Da sets down the filled can and walks a little nearer. ‘Hole in the radiator,’ he says. ‘I’ve come for my family.’

The two men face each other. Da’s shorter but stronger looking, dark and fierce. Pudsey looks soft-boiled in comparison. ‘What about the bombs?’ he says.

‘There are no bombs.’ Da flicks his eyes over John and Rosie. ‘Get your Mam. And get packed up.’

That was the end of it. Pudsey walks them to the gate and even gives Da an egg for the radiator. They trail down the lane with Da carrying the can, John the suitcase, and Rosie leading the crying twins. Only Jean is pleased to be going home.

Da’s in a foul temper all right, muttering about the ‘dirty menashin’, who’d seen them off with a triumphant ‘I told you they were gypsies!’ to her husband. Rosie knows he’d have hated having to find out where they were, hated the exposure involved, and the expedition would have been expensive for him, too. Though he buys and sells cars, Da never keeps one to drive himself. But at least he doesn’t shout at Mam, probably realising she’s now almost completely safe inside the protective shell of late pregnancy. Instead, he blames Rosie for the whole thing; for tricking him, for forcing him to fend for himself, for the terrible sin of leaving kin for a life with gadgies. ‘Ye could have put a stop to her nonsense. It was up to ye.’

The twins cheer up when they see the car, and the novelty of actually getting in and being driven sustains them through the whole tortuous journey, which takes four hours because the egg only half works and they have to keep stopping for water. It’s after blackout by the time they get back to Gateshead and Rosie has to strain to see the white markings on the road to guide her father. She has a terrible headache by the time he drops them at home and goes off somewhere into the night with the car.

Up the back steps they go, past Mrs Wainwright’s washing and Mr Pole’s door, seeping its old man smell. Looking out of the window the next morning, Rosie thinks you’d never know there’s a war going on, because this Gateshead looks exactly the same as the town they’d left.

In the months that follow, Rosie’s time in Middleton shrinks in her mind to the size of a photograph, its people small faces you have to bring close to your face to recall. It becomes a moment of light, frozen, before the shutter clicks and the square goes black.

2

Falmouth, 5 March 1942

It took a count of six to cover the ten feet between the oil tank and the shelter of the wall. Philip shone his torch at his watch: 04.20 hrs. Shit. Two minutes behind. Tucker joined him, breathing hard.

‘Strang’s copped it,’ he said.

Automatic gunfire burst out again, but off-target, well to the left of them. Did that mean they’d got here unseen? Got to get on, got to make up the time. Philip peered around the edge of the wall and then stood up, shouldering the heavy pack: 04.21. Start counting. He ran the distance in thirty, found the stairway, ducked down the first few steps and waited for Tucker. Thirty-nine, forty. A searchlight swooped across the opening and a machine gun opened up.

A voice screamed out: ‘You’re hit, Tucker… Lie down!’

Revise plans, think, think… Philip started down the steps fast, too fast, stumbling in the darkness; the weight of his pack nearly threw him down the stairwell. How many steps gone? Christ, forgot to count. Twenty? Must be twenty. Can’t see a thing. He went on down the steps until his feet hit the level floor. Left turn. Just ahead, the turbines and the pumping gear. Yes. Philip shone his torch on to his wrist. 04.24. Eight minutes. He couldn’t do it. Revise plans. Okay. Just the big one. He hefted off his pack and pulled out the packages of plasticine, the detonators and the cordtex. Seven minutes to lay the charges and get out. Four hundred and twenty seconds. One, two, three…

He began moulding the stuff to the first big casting joint, but his torch skittered away. Swinging round to retrieve it, he smashed his forehead against hard metal. Christ! He moved on to the next joint. Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one.

The quiet around him deepened. Whatever happened up there, down here his fingers must dance their delicate routine around the joints, keeping time with the numbers mounting in his head. At three hundred and fifty he ran out the cordtex, connected the charges to the main ring and counted a further twenty to check his work, flicking the torch beam quickly over the machinery. Okay. Looked okay. He picked up his pack, pulled the pins and charged full pelt for the stairs. Fifty to get up. Lift those fucking legs!

At the top, Tucker’s white face loomed out of the gloom.

‘Get your head down.’

Both men crouched, covering their heads.

Four hundred and nineteen, four hundred and twenty. Four hundred and twenty-one. Philip looked up. The stars in the night sky had faded a little with the first pale wash of dawn. ‘Mission accomplished, I hope. Why aren’t you dead anyway?’

Tucker tapped his thigh. ‘Only a leg wound. Got permission to proceed with you to the assembly point.’

‘Any more guns?’

‘They seem to have fucked off somewhere else.’

‘Let’s go then.’

‘Hang about. Being as I’m injured, hadn’t you better carry my pack?’

‘How about a tourniquet? A nice tight one?’

They jogged the last 500 yards to the embarkation assembly point, located behind one of the large storage tanks littering the dockyard. Their CO, Jimmy Burns, emerged from the shadows, stopwatch in hand. ‘Where’s number three?’

‘Caught in enemy fire, lock gate two,’ said Tucker.

Burns wrote something in a small notebook, tucked his pencil inside and shut it. ‘Report 06.00 hours,’ he said, and walked away.

Philip flung himself down on the cold concrete. Tucker, limping convincingly, sat down beside him. There would be no embarkation today, of course. The exercise finished, they now had an hour to kill before the debriefing, while another commando team inspected the work. Time to wind down, if that was possible. Philip turned his collar up against the breeze, punched his pack into some semblance of a pillow, and lay back.

Footsteps. The outline of a man coming towards them. A large man, broad-shouldered. Anderson. Philip tensed. The fastest and strongest man in the six-strong demolition squad, Anderson would be on his usual mission to find out who’d ballsed up. He loved to crow. Philip closed his eyes but Anderson’s voice intruded. ‘Make it in time?’ he said.

‘Just,’ said Philip.

‘Looks like we’re the only survivors from our lot.’ Anderson grinned, his teeth big and white in the dim light.

‘Matter of fact, I’m bleeding to death,’ said Tucker.

‘Where’s Murray?’

‘I dunno. Off writing a poem somewhere, I expect.’

Philip was still counting. Sometimes it took him half an hour to stop. He woke up in the night counting, counted stairs, seagulls, boats, his own breaths.

‘It won’t be as hard as that really,’ Tucker said. ‘They’re just trying to put the wind up. Keep us on our toes. Don’t you reckon?’

Anderson still loitered. ‘Oh could be a lot worse than that, Tucks, me old China.’

A hundred and eight. Sadistic bastard. A hundred and nine… ‘Thought of joining the Spanish Inquisition, Anderson? Your talents are wasted in the British Army.’

‘Mr Educated. Better off back at university, you’d be.’

Tucker intervened. ‘All right, all right. Don’t start bloody arguing, you two. I’m trying to get some sleep.’

‘Night night, then. Sweet dreams.’ Anderson paused for a reaction, and not getting one, wandered off towards the harbour wall.

‘When did Strang drop out?’ Tucker asked.

‘02.16.’ Philip knew Strang was getting jumpy. Well, they all were. He hoped Anderson wouldn’t find Strang.

Tucker said, ‘I don’t reckon it’s going to be as hard as that. Do you?’

‘Let’s get a bit of sleep before the post mortem.’

‘Then we can go back to the digs for breakfast. Get Rosie to do us a fry up.’

‘Is that her name? You’re a fast worker.’

‘Not the time to hang about it, is it?’ said Tucker, settling himself for sleep, head propped on his pack, hands clasped on his chest. He just needed a dog curled under his feet to be the picture of a plump medieval knight on his tomb.

Philip closed his eyes. Despite the chill his body still felt warm from its exertions and he should have been able to sleep. But his imagination got to work. Tucker hit, his eyes wide and terrified, blood pumping from a huge wound. You’d just have to go on: helping jeopardised the mission and endangered everyone else. ‘If you were hit,’ Philip said aloud, ‘I’d want to help. You know that, don’t you?’

Tucker said nothing.

‘Tucker? Edmund? Anybody there?’

Philip sat up and rummaged in his pockets for a cigarette. The counting still whispered in his head, but for a second or two he felt elated. He’d done it. If it went like this on the day, he’d get back. Though nothing had been said, all the indications were that day would be soon, the move yesterday down to Falmouth pretty obviously the final stage of their training. He lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew out a long snake of smoke, his brief sense of triumph dispersing.

If only the Brits could defeat the Germans somewhere, any old where, but collapse followed defeat on all fronts, increasing the pressure that it was somehow up to you to do something about it. The news a fortnight ago of the loss of Singapore had made everyone desperate to get on with it. But get on with what? Not fighting the Japs, he felt sure about that. It would be France, surely. One of the ports, chock-full of Nazis with big guns.

The worst part was the sense that everyone else relied on you to do your bit. He knew he’d cock it up; let everybody down. His heart began to thump fast in his chest. Control it. He pulled back his shoulders, took some deep breaths, scanned the horizon for an object to focus on. He had disciplined himself to do this; to find something and drill into it with such intensity of thought that it drove back panic.

Beyond the docks lay the dark sprawl of the town, and rising into the sky, a church spire… In the Gothic style. Early fifteenth-century perhaps. Concentrate. Concentrate.

A child again, Philip leads Abel, Davy and Will up the winding stairs of the bell tower. He can hardly believe that he’s got them